Check The Diagonal

Dude, Black is Black

I heard about this story last Friday.  Torii Hunter, the 11th highest paid MLB baseball player in 2009 provides us yet another example of why athletes should stick to sports and leave the social commentary to others.  Article here 

"As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us," Hunter says. "It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?'

The consensus seem to be that Hunter will get a pass for this.  Baseball people have come to his defense and many have said his comments were out of context and misinterpreted. The quote above is pretty emphatic and so I’m finding it difficult to find any context where Hunter is worthy his pass.  I found his entire rant racist in a way that feels inspired by jealousy and envy and ignorance.  School Daze was a 1988 flick.

Readers already know my wife and children are Dominican and I’ve spent a lot of time in D.R so I say this from experience. The Dominican Republic is a black country because they have the blood of African slaves running through their veins the same way Torii Hunter does. Dominicans, who are a fiercely proud and patriotic people, consider themselves Dominican first and Latino second but it doesn’t diminish the fact that the slavery history of the country makes it impossible for them to be called black imposters in any context.

Additionally, Hunter should summer league in D.R soon because his baseball knowledge is severely lacking as well.  Baseball is the national sport in the Dominican Republic in a way it will never be on the south side of Chicago or anywhere else in America.  Some Dominicans play a little basketball (my wife’s father was a basketball player) and Dominicans love to watch a good boxing match but aside from that there is nothing else but baseball.  There’s no football, soccer, tennis, lacrosse or track. Kids of all ages play baseball. They start with a stick and few rocks as soon as they can stand on their own two feet and if they’re lucky, they get invited to participate in one of the many baseball schools on the island where they do nothing else their entire childhood but get better at playing baseball. 

As for the dumb ass bag of chips comment, Torii should check that list of MLB salaries, there are multiple Dominicans who make at least what he makes and the top two highest paid in players in 2009, who make double what he does, are both Dominican and represented by Scott Boras.

UPDATE:  Speaking of Dominican Baseball, I caught Sugar again last night.  While I have problems with the movie and its portrayal of Dominican tenacity and temperment there is no question this is a movie about boys who are poor as dirt trying to make something of themselves through baseball.  It is their hoop dreams.  Let me know if you see a white Dominican face in the vid.  Maybe Vlad should rent this for Torii?

Who Am I?

I talk about racism a lot.  That is basically how I spend my free time lately; thinking and talking about race and racism.  I attribute this new trend to the overabundance of racism we’ve experienced since moving to Georgia from New York City 3 years ago.  This new negative exposure has made me both hypersensitive and aware like never before.  But I like talking about it.  It raises my passion and it’s clearly necessary.  We do not talk about the subject honestly or nearly enough as far as I’m concerned. 

That said, let me be upfront, regardless of your own background, if you are framing your approach to the conversation of race and racism based on what you think you see in me, before you attempt to get to know me, you are going to be wrong.  I’m not not that guy.  If we could only agree on that one point before we begin I think we would be framing the conversation in the right way from jump.  Let’s agree that we don’t know each other.  And let’s us not be like those street corner MCs who try to act like they’re spitting freestyle when you know they wrote that shit at home last month.

If we can agree to make our conversation about race and racism about us getting to know each other than we might be able diffuse what I think are the two wrong ways to go about talking about race, which unsurprisingly happen to be the two most common ways to talk about race.  The first is making the conversation be confrontational.  If someone has got to “win”, or if I’ve got to feel like we might be throwing joints before its all over, we aren’t going to learn anything and someone is going to get their feelings hurt.   The second is stereotyping and we all do it when talking about race.  Its so easy to regurgitate all those things we’ve learned about someone we aren’t talking to at the moment if we can paint the person we are talking to with the broadest brush and then turn it on ourselves, its safe.  But we’ve heard it all before and its boring and won’t accomplish anything.  Talk to me about something I might not have already heard, something that will make me think, feel uncomfortable or happy.  But talk.

The Failure of the NAACP

My twitter feed and inbox was full of cheers over the NAACP Image Awards last night.  Most people loved it.  @NAACP retweeted comments which they were most proud of during and after the show, most of which equated to this year’s Image Awards being the best one of all time. The only consistent criticism I saw was either in protest of Sandra Bullock’s nomination for her work in “The Blind Side” (both because she is white and the movie is one big racist stereotype) or against the stereotypical freight train that is Tyler Perry Inc.  And THAT is exactly why the NAACP is an absolute failure in its current incarnation and how it has utterly failed people of color and America.

From The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website, some history:

“The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.”

And the organizations mission statement, also from the NAACP website”

“The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”

The NAACP was formed 102 years ago in response to the appalling violence and injustice committed against people of color in America.  And in that past 102 years the NAACP has been responsible for a countless number of great accomplishments, including but by no means not limited to:

• The first African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I
• IN 1920 taught America to be brave in the face of injustice and hate by holding their annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia-Stronghold of the Klan
• First broke segregation at the University of Maryland in 1935
• The Kerr Principle
• Morgan vs. Virginia
• Brown vs. the Board of Education
• The Civil and Voting Rights Acts

If the goal was to assimilate then I am sadly mistaken and you can stop reading now.  If the goal was to be accepted into the big house, through the front door, not because it’s our house, but because we have grown to look and act the same as they who now accept us, then the mission was accomplished, you can stop now, there is nothing left to fight over.

I hope to fucking God, not.  I spend a majority of my day feeling like ALL I ever do is complain.  My three beautiful babies are inheriting a world that is racially less diverse, more segregated and more insensitive than the one they might have been forced to navigate 40 years ago.  Racism and hatred in the form of perverse nationalism and populism has become mainstream and acceptable and it is broadcast live on Fox every single day.  A United States Senator, just yesterday said that Black people were better off as slaves than they are now and CNN won’t even give that two minutes of airtime, Fox News will applaud him for saying it every 30 minutes for the next week.  There will be no constructive outrage.  We are officially desensitized.

Last night I watched the only organization in America with the size, history and experience capable of mobilizing Americans against this growing surge in racial hatred as an acceptable political weapon condone it by paying the very people responsible for cultivating that same racism and hatred to host their Image Awards. The millions of African American advertising dollars spent on the NAACP Image Awards broadcast are free to be used to fund Roger Ailes campaign against minorities in America via Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.  In prouder days the NAACP would be at the forefront of the war against Fox and their exploitation of minority athletes on Fox Sports as a vehicle to fund racism and hatred on Fox News.  Today the NAACP merely makes its own contributes to the fund.

No, this is sickening tragedy, Shakespearian in quality.  The NAACP has turned its cheek and claimed great success as measured by how many people watched an award show. An award show which included the nomination of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Michael Jackson’s Funeral Services.  Since when do we celebrate stereotypes or perpetuate them ourselves?  I don’t get the sense that the NAACP is paying attention to the needs of minorities in America.  Maybe they are waiting for President Obama to their job for them ala Tavis Smiley’s search for a Black agenda.  Don’t search, lead.  Either way, the NAACP is currently worse than irrelevant, they are complicity part of the problem, and should therefore no longer be supported by minorities in America .   Those accomplishments I listed above were a really long time ago.  Those laurels done died.

On the off chance someone at the NAACP reads this, there is an army of intelligent, angry and frustrated Americans waiting for someone to organize them in the cause against racism and hatred as a weapon in America if you would only show the courage and vision to do the work your founders so vigilantly did before you. In other words, wake the fuck up por favor.

Racism cannot be politically correct

By now everyone has heard that George Lopez is going to be making a modern day version of Speedy Gonzales.  Some in the Latino community are pleased because there are so few Latino directors and producers that any hire, regardless of content, should be looked on favorably.  Correct, there is a complete absence of Latino executives in Hollywood but talk to me when a Latino gets a shot that doesn’t also include reviving one of the worst racist stereotypes of Latinos in television history.  The next Oscar Indie flick was obviously unavailable for Lopez to produce.  The anger, which I share, has led many in the Latino community have come out and call Lopez Tio Tomas.  I’m not even sure what Uncle Tom represents anymore and dislike how carelessly its thrown around.  Is that what people think is boilerplate for sellout?  It’s not.  This is about Lopez getting straight up paid at the expense of his people.  The man sold out and should be fucking ashamed of himself.  Call him a sell-out.   And he should go ahead get paid, but don’t try to fool the Latino community into thinking racism can be remade to be politically correct in order to sell tickets and save face.  You’re in the anti-circle holmes.

“We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s — the racist Speedy,” said Ann Lopez, George’s wife, who will serve alongside him as a producer.”

Mrs. Lopez, how do you intend to politically remake this?

Happy Birthday Dr. King

Colbert brilliance

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That same ol schtick

I know Vanity Fair has a long history of this shit but this is just beyond craven in its racial exploitation.  Whether he likes it or not, Tiger is definitely black now.

Southern Strategy

Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a great point regarding the latest batch of southern racism by Lindsey Graham which is that poor white people should be offended by these comments too.  Frankly, I am usually too busy being offended as a minority parent to see a story like this from a white perspective (but yes, I check the white box).

“The charitable interpretation rests on the invisibility of white suffering. It rests on the erasure of Clay County. It rests on the notion that the white poor are not merely the white poor, but white trash. It's a formula makes an anchor of black America, straps it to a larger population of poor white Americans and then drops them in the Mississippi. It's a con that asks large swaths of white folks to suffer poverty in shame and silence.”

Having lived in the South these past 3 years I can recognize Lindsey Graham’s motivation for wanting to intentional promote segregation of race, for wanting to make Medicare a black thing versus a poor American thing.  But don’t call it anything except blatant racism based on the same old Southern Strategy that has made Republicans the Southern Regional Party. 

 

For all intent and purpose the South is still very much segregated.  It’s self-segregated; we see it at the mall, at our children’s schools, and out in the street.  Mentality here is such that segregated is a way of life for most.  There are very few interracial couples (like me and my wife) and even social clicks at the movies or out on the town are very much cut along racial lines.  Poor black and white still bow their head and move to the side when rich white folk pass and the poorer the person, the more yessir and yes maam you will hear, its inbred subservience when deep down, its Chris Rock’s janitor hiding his true feelings.  Graham’s comments and the sentiments that drive them is the thing that allows poor whites in the South to feel better than poor blacks.  It’s their one rung above on the ladder.  It’s their cling to the false idea of the shiftless Negro sitting on the couch waiting for the next check to come while the poor white family is struggling to make ends meet.  It’s their excuse for their unhappiness and lot in life.  Truth doesn’t matter down here.  That’s why birthers and deathers and teabagers are mostly poor southern whites and those splinters are mostly about racism.  They should be publicly offended and outraged by Graham but to do so would force them to admit too much and so they remain happy in their ignorance. 

Poem for Sunday

for my children, growing up interracial in a South that won't accept them.   The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.

The South

The lazy, laughing South

With blood on its mouth.

The sunny-faced South,

    Beast-strong,

    Idiot-brained.

The child-minded South

Scratching in the dead fire's ashes

For a Negro's bones.

    Cotton and the moon,

    Warmth, earth, warmth,

    The sky, the sun, the stars,

    The magnolia-scented South.

Beautiful, like a woman,

Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,

    Passionate, cruel,

    Honey-lipped, syphilitic--

    That is the South.

And I, who am black, would love her

But she spits in my face.

And I, who am black,

Would give her many rare gifts

But she turns her back upon me.

    So now I seek the North--

    The cold-faced North,

    For she, they say,

    Is a kinder mistress,

And in her house my children

May escape the spell of the South.

-Langston Hughes

Stained by our Nation's Original Sin of Slavery...

What do the GOP and Keith Bardwell, the racist Louisiana Justice of the Peace who denied an interracial couple a marriage license have in common?  They both used the "some of my best friends are black" racism defense this week.  The GOP here and Mr. Bardwell as quoted by the AP here.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

"They" even get to use his bathroom.  Do they come in the house through the front door or the back?

I still believe that the racists of the South are endangered as an ever shrinking minority.  But stories like this don't make it easy for me to do so.  We live in the South.  I'm white, my wife is hispanic.  My children are obviously not accepted by Bardwell and people like him.

I sat down with my family last night and re-watched Obama's Philadelphia speech on race and I feel great hope for their future this morning. There is a reason Republican party identity is at all time low and their embrace of racism is one of them.  The masses are rejecting Michael Steele's black-face, gettin jiggy wit it nonsense and they are appalled, as are we, by Bardwell and people like him.

But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”  -Barack Obama

 

The GOP Heroes

The page is here.  It is as stark a reminder of the craven depravity and racism inherit in the Republican Party establishment as we are going to get.  It started with the election of an unqualified, unprepared Michael Steele as RNC Chair as Black token and culminates in a GOP page for Republican Heroes that is dominated with Black and Latino faces, including Jackie Robinson who was not a Republican. 

It is obvious they are stretching to prove a point.  But, its the wrong one.  It is the same ol"some of my best friends are Black people" point.  It is a racist defense made by a racist entity trying to hide the fact that the majority of their party members think Obama is either the Anti-Christ or born in Kenya in order to pander for minority votes.  What the RNC cannot seem to fathom is that Barack Obama did not win the 2008 Presidential Election BECAUSE he is Black.  He won it DESPITE the fact that he is Black.

Business as usual in Georgia

Georgia State Congressman, candidate for Govennor and racist Nathan Deal. 

Think he regrets what he said or that he got caught saying it?

AJC has the story here.

“We got all the complaints of the ghetto grandmothers who didn’t have birth certificates and all that. We wrote some very liberal language as to how you can verify it. My mother was born in 1906 and she didn’t have a birth certificate. They didn’t give birth certificates back then. But we got her one, because you can do it under the proper procedures of your state.”

Poem for Sunday

I am sad that I can find little reason for the insane protests and fury from the right other than race.

THEME FOR ENGLISH B by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1951

Just throw the dog whistle away

With subtleties thrown by the wayside first term Kansas Republican Lynn Jenkins offers up words of "hope" and white supremacy...

"Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope," Jenkins said to the crowd. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington."

I wonder what Michael Steele thinks of this?

How can you oppose reform with numbers like these?

If these numbers from the CDC don't make you angry I don't know what will.

The United States ranked 29th in the world in infant mortality in 2004, compared to 27th in 2000, 23rd in 1990 and 12th in 1960, according to a new report from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Does it really ALWAYS come down to racism in this country?  Is this a black and hispanic problem or an American one?

The infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 2.4 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women. In 2005, the infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 13.63 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to a rate of 5.76 for non-Hispanic white women. Rates were also higher for Puerto Rican and American Indian women, 8.30 and 8.06 respectively.

 

36 Companies have dropped Beck- Whose left?

Media Matters compiles the list of who advertised on Beck last night.

• DirecTV
• Binder & Binder
• EasyWater
• Liberty Medical
• Superior Gold Group
• Bank of America
• Rosland Capital
• Johnson Law Group
• Citrix (GoToMeeting)
• Carbonite
• Merit Financial
• Applebee's
• Discover Bank (Discover Card)
• Binder & Binder
• Pulaski & Middleman
• Sandals Resort
• The Villages
• Smart Balance
• Rosland Capital
• Zero Technologies (ZeroWater)

Racism and the racists who practice it.

Congressman Scott's office in Smyrna is a short drive away from where I live with my three half-Hispanic children and Hispanic wife.  I am concerned to say the least.  We get the looks when we are out together as a family, along with a great deal of general rudeness and it is constant.  We live with this everyday and the looks of resentment and dislike and hate are real and are getting worse.   

But I won't move, Georgia is beautiful and there are good people here who hate this brand of hate and racism as much as we do.  I love it here as do my children who are thriving both academically and socially.  The South is no longer a place for racism and the racists that embrace it.  What we are witnessing is a very angry minority.  The swastikas and hate mail and dirty looks are a desperate attempt to preserve life amidst the death throws of The Lost Cause.

America has been here before; these tactics are not new.  The salient point of the video below is exactly that.  Think back to one of the darkest periods in American history, in the south, during the civil rights movement.  Yes.  It is racism that is most resistant to change.

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UPDATE:  Congressman Scott has received multiple written death threats including this letter shared with the media:

"To: NIGGA DAVID SCOTT / You were / You are / And / You shall forever be a nigga!" It added, "The Ethiopian cannot make himself white."

and one that said:

"and any of your colored constituents ain't gonna stop it. The folks are not going to stand for socialized medicine, even though most negroes refuse to stand on their own two feet."

Aside from the obvious, it is again ironic to me that these racists would quote the bible while spewing such venom.

More dog whistling

Of course the idea here is to remind everyone how different Obama is from "us" while calling up the memories of the Falwell "Tellitubbies will make your children gay" crusade.

Is all the resistance simply because Obama is black?  "They" want "their" America back? Posters like this make me think so.

Sotomayor Confirmed!

I couldn't help but hug my daughter.  I hope this means her glass ceiling as a female minority just got a little bit higher.  The hard truth remains that she will still have to work twice as hard and be twice as good as a less than equal white male.  We will do what we can as parents to prepare her for that but it is just the sad state of our nation today. 

But, I think today is a day for great celebration.  The original constitutional framers never accounted for Barack Obama or Sonia Sotomayor.  When America was founded slavery was intentionally allowed to remain legal and a woman wasn't legally considered equal until 1920.  In that light I think its fitting and wonderful that America's first Black president nominated America's first Latina justice to the Supreme Court.

Its unfortunate that America is still a country of so many of these firsts.  It seems like every major election cycle brings the same tired meme of another major milestone for women and minorities and with it the sexism and racism that always follows.  It is so contrary to what we Americans espouse as what makes us great and special; as if we are more simply, a nation of hypocrites.  Give us your tired and poor as long as they don't look or sound different from the average white male or need any help, at all....

Judge Sotomayor's confirmation process was no different.  78% of Republican Senators, a great many from traditionally racist southern states, voted against confirmation for Judge Sotomayor despite her long and outstanding record of academic over-achievement and fairness on the bench.

Keep this list of their names.  Watch for their re-election campaigns.  Obama proved to us that Yes We Can isn't a slogan, its proof that we can each individually make a difference.   If you are one of their constituents call and write your representative, express your displeasure, canvass in direct opposition to racism and Rovian politics, write letters to the editor of your local paper, tell your friends and for gods sake vote. 

What southern white racists consider funny.

It is awful that he said it, but so much worse that there was applause and laughter.  Barack Obama is black, blacks and those who loved blacks were the primary recipients of lynchings.  Based on the audience's reaction to the joke, I think it's safe to assume they made that same connection.

Call and write Todd Akin(R-MO) and tell him that using lies, distortion and racism to whip up frenzied support among the Republican base in order to further divide America is dangerous, irresponsible and no joking matter. 

Hon. Todd Akin
117 Cannon House Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20515
Voice: (202) 225-2561

on. Todd Akin
301 Sovereign Court, Ste. 201
St. Louis, MO 63011
Voice: (314)-590-0029

Lynching happened.  It is not funny.